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A friend of mine pointed out that in Finland speeding tickets cost you a proportionate amount of your income, instead of being a set amount. So, for example, if you made $20,000 last year a ticket might cost you $200. If you made $2million last year, the same infraction would cost you $20,000.


He rather likes this idea, and states he would like to see it used for ALL fines (in the name of social justice). I'm not so sure. He claims it's only fair that everyone pay proportionately to what they have.

Thoughts?

Makes sense. The whole point of a fine is to act as punishment and a deterrent, and it can't do those things if the fine is for such a trivial amount relative to your income that you don't even notice it.

My counterpoint is Thus: If you base fines around available money, why not do the same with prison sentences?

Women live on average 8% longer then men. 1 year to a man is more of his life than 1 year to a woman. Should women automatically be sentenced to 8% longer terms then men for the same crime? Proportional punishment and deterrent and all that.

 cuda1179 wrote:
My counterpoint is Thus: If you base fines around available money, why not do the same with prison sentences?

Women live on average 8% longer then men. 1 year to a man is more of his life than 1 year to a woman. Should women automatically be sentenced to 8% longer terms then men for the same crime? Proportional punishment and deterrent and all that.

Well, prison and fines are way different. On top of that, you can easily determine how much a person made the previous year, you cannot predict how long a person can live. A persons health is always changing.

 cuda1179 wrote:
My counterpoint is Thus: If you base fines around available money, why not do the same with prison sentences?

Women live on average 8% longer then men. 1 year to a man is more of his life than 1 year to a woman. Should women automatically be sentenced to 8% longer terms then men for the same crime? Proportional punishment and deterrent and all that.

Two reasons:

1) You're using an excessively simplified model for "fairness" (one which coincidentally lines up with sexist ideology, but we'll assume you didn't mean that). Women may live 8% longer on average, but lifespans for each gender are still a very broad range and overlap considerably in the middle. For example, should an unhealthy woman who is likely to die on the short end of the scale, below the male average, get a shorter sentence than a healthy man who is likely to exceed the average? Should the scale be a percentage of total life, or a percentage of remaining life? Etc.

2) You're nitpicking over a relatively small difference in ability to "pay" with years of life. An 8% difference is statistically significant, but not something that really matters to the person receiving the sentence. Nobody is thinking "well, this 20 year sentence isn't that scary because it's calibrated for someone with 8% less lifespan than me". It's still a huge punishment. A $200 fine for a billionaire, on the other hand, isn't. Instead of an 8% difference you have an orders of magnitude difference, to the point that the billionaire isn't even aware of the fine because their secretary handled such a minor detail without bothering to waste their time informing them. If the only deterrent for, say, speeding is a $200 fine then that's effectively zero deterrent at all. The billionaire can drive 30mph over the limit at all times, and if they ever get pulled over just hand the cop $200 and drive off. Being delayed by getting pulled over and having to wait while the cop writes the ticket is probably more of a punishment than the fine.

It doesn't matter if prison is different or not. Punishment should be proportional, right?


So, if Trump got a speeding ticket in one of those years he had a negative income, he shouldn't have to pay, right? If a rich guy M.C Hammer's his fortune right before/after getting a ticket he gets a major refund?


How about children of rich parents? 18-year old Paris Hilton never had an income. How does she "learn a lesson"?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
My counterpoint is Thus: If you base fines around available money, why not do the same with prison sentences?

Women live on average 8% longer then men. 1 year to a man is more of his life than 1 year to a woman. Should women automatically be sentenced to 8% longer terms then men for the same crime? Proportional punishment and deterrent and all that.

Two reasons:

1) You're using an excessively simplified model for "fairness" (one which coincidentally lines up with sexist ideology, but we'll assume you didn't mean that). Women may live 8% longer on average, but lifespans for each gender are still a very broad range and overlap considerably in the middle. For example, should an unhealthy woman who is likely to die on the short end of the scale, below the male average, get a shorter sentence than a healthy man who is likely to exceed the average? Should the scale be a percentage of total life, or a percentage of remaining life? Etc.

2) You're nitpicking over a relatively small difference in ability to "pay" with years of life. An 8% difference is statistically significant, but not something that really matters to the person receiving the sentence. Nobody is thinking "well, this 20 year sentence isn't that scary because it's calibrated for someone with 8% less lifespan than me". It's still a huge punishment. A $200 fine for a billionaire, on the other hand, isn't. Instead of an 8% difference you have an orders of magnitude difference, to the point that the billionaire isn't even aware of the fine because their secretary handled such a minor detail without bothering to waste their time informing them. If the only deterrent for, say, speeding is a $200 fine then that's effectively zero deterrent at all. The billionaire can drive 30mph over the limit at all times, and if they ever get pulled over just hand the cop $200 and drive off. Being delayed by getting pulled over and having to wait while the cop writes the ticket is probably more of a punishment than the fine.

There are a couple things you are forgetting.... After multiple offences you get your license yanked, regardless of if you paid. That's a flat punishment everyone feels. Second, if I was in prison, you dang strait I'd be looking at that 8% discount. You do bring up a good point about the range of lifespan. Should a guy with terminal cancer only get a couple months in prison for attempted murder? It'll eat up a proportionate amount of his life.


Also, I bring up the "simplified model of fairness" as I've heard it before, ironically from BLM supporters. Basically they argue African Americans should get proportionately shorter prison sentences, also they should be able to hit the Social Security sooner.

 cuda1179 wrote:
It doesn't matter if prison is different or not. Punishment should be proportional, right?


So, if Trump got a speeding ticket in one of those years he had a negative income, he shouldn't have to pay, right? If a rich guy M.C Hammer's his fortune right before/after getting a ticket he gets a major refund?


How about children of rich parents? 18-year old Paris Hilton never had an income. How does she "learn a lesson"?

It does matter. A fine and prison time are fundamentally different punishments.

That doesn't make sense. He may have had a low income for the year but his net worth is still high.

Paris Hilton probably has a trust fund. On top of that, there is a chance that at 18 she is still considered a dependent. Kinda like how families have to provide insurance to their kids until they are a certain age.

 cuda1179 wrote:
It doesn't matter if prison is different or not. Punishment should be proportional, right?

You're the one assuming "punishment should be proportional" as a universal principle, with "proportional" defined in the particular terms that you favor. The actual point is that punishment should be effective. Increasing fines for the wealthy isn't a matter of fairness, it's a matter of pragmatic effectiveness. A fine that is too small relative to income is not a deterrent, and might as well not exist. So you increase the fine based on income/assets until it hurts sufficiently to act as a deterrent.

So, if Trump got a speeding ticket in one of those years he had a negative income, he shouldn't have to pay, right?

No, Trump's assets would still count and he'd get a higher fine. But if you're out of both income and assets then congratulations, you aren't rich and you pay the minimum fine.

How about children of rich parents? 18-year old Paris Hilton never had an income. How does she "learn a lesson"?

At 18 years old she is an adult. Add up her assets and income (with parental gifts counting as income), bill her appropriately. She clearly has income of some kind because she isn't homeless and starving. And if she tries to hide that wealth, well, a prison sentence for fraud should quickly put an end to that.

There are a couple things you are forgetting.... After multiple offences you get your license yanked, regardless of if you paid. That's a flat punishment everyone feels.

Yes, this is why it's a hypothetical situation. You're nitpicking the details of the hypothetical situation and ignoring the point: that a $200 fine for a billionaire effectively does not exist and is not a deterrent at all. It produces no change in behavior, no concern for following the law.

Second, if I was in prison, you dang strait I'd be looking at that 8% discount.

You're missing the point. Of course if you're already in prison you would do everything you can to get years off your sentence, but that's not the question. The actual question is whether, if you were considering committing a crime, the difference between a 20 year sentence and a 22 year sentence would make any meaningful difference. Would you obey the law at 22 years, but feel that if it's "only" 20 years you should commit the crime? Of course not. The prison sentence is still painful enough to be a deterrent, even if it isn't precisely calibrated to the offender's expected lifespan.

Also, I bring up the "simplified model of fairness" as I've heard it before, ironically from BLM supporters. Basically they argue African Americans should get proportionately shorter prison sentences, also they should be able to hit the Social Security sooner.

I have never heard this argued. Perhaps you are confusing "BLM supporters" with "that one person I saw ranting on tumblr that one time"?

Honestly it seems like to much work on a ticket to ticket basis.

Instead let's do a Three Strikes bonus where once the cops finally get tired of giving the same speeder tickets they say "feth it you get a special prize" and the courts slam you for wasting law enforcement's time so much in a way that'll actually make an impression

And you know... Maybe fix our damn road laws so that they're more consistent and less subject to the whims at the cops at had. Stop targeting out of state drivers for special interest. Making speed limits suggestions, like we all treat them, instead of pretending they actually mean anything. End predatory speed traps.

 cuda1179 wrote:
My counterpoint is Thus: If you base fines around available money, why not do the same with prison sentences?

Women live on average 8% longer then men. 1 year to a man is more of his life than 1 year to a woman. Should women automatically be sentenced to 8% longer terms then men for the same crime? Proportional punishment and deterrent and all that.

Because actual income is measurable in the here and now, life expectancy isnt. I can tell you how much I make in a year. I cannot tell you I will be alive tomorrow morning.Its likely, hangover notwithstanding, but its not for sure. But, having just filed taxes, I can tell you precisely what I am worth.

There are also courts? So if you had a significant complaint as to why you suddenly werent worth what it days on paper, you can appeal it.

 LordofHats wrote:
Honestly it seems like to much work on a ticket to ticket basis.

Instead let's do a Three Strikes bonus where once the cops finally get tired of giving the same speeder tickets they say "feth it you get a special prize" and the courts slam you for wasting law enforcement's time so much in a way that'll actually make an impression

And you know... Maybe fix our damn road laws so that they're more consistent and less subject to the whims at the cops at had. Stop targeting out of state drivers for special interest. Making speed limits suggestions, like we all treat them, instead of pretending they actually mean anything. End predatory speed traps.

I'm with Lord of Hats here. The Law should be Blind and be applied evenly regardless of who you are. That's kind of the cornerstone of our democracy. Having that law ironed out, transparent, and having increasing levels of punishment for repeat offenders is probably the better approach.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I'm with Lord of Hats here. The Law should be Blind and be applied evenly regardless of who you are. That's kind of the cornerstone of our democracy. Having that law ironed out, transparent, and having increasing levels of punishment for repeat offenders is probably the better approach.

It's quite easily to apply the law evenly to everyone regardless of who you are: "the penalty for speeding is (X% of income/assets) or $200, whichever is greater". Same law for everyone, no special exceptions. Except by defining the fine (which is applied to everyone) as a percentage instead of a fixed value the fine is a meaningful deterrent to everyone, there is no ability to escape the consequences by being rich enough that the fixed-price fine is too small to care about.

 cuda1179 wrote:
After multiple offences you get your license yanked, regardless of if you paid. That's a flat punishment everyone feels.

Not even remotely true. A wealthy individual can afford to hire someone to drive them, an impoverished individual is forced to rely on charity rides and public transit if they cannot afford a service, neither of which are safe guarantees.

Yeah, about that. when I was making $110,000 per year as an engineer I couldn't afford a personal driver, so try again.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Yeah, about that. when I was making $110,000 per year as an engineer I could afford a personal driver, so try again.

What exactly is your point here?

That people in top income brackets don't crap in gold plated toilets and don't live in a fairy land where they can afford a personal chauffer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
[
I have never heard this argued. Perhaps you are confusing "BLM supporters" with "that one person I saw ranting on tumblr that one time"?

Or, perhaps you could do a little less lip flapping and find out that it is a movement with a somewhat large base of support including the Urban Institute.

At the end of the day I think most fines are revenue raising bs in the first place that 90% of the time trap people with disproportionate penalties for making minor mistakes rather than genuinely doing anything "bad".

Let's fix that first and then start worrying about how much we charge people when they do genuinely do something that deserves punishment.

It seems to me that the OP has lost the plot of his thread and is hopping around unrelated subjects like a cricket.

Therefore I see no point in its continuance.

So where did I go off topic???

 cuda1179 wrote:
That people in top income brackets don't crap in gold plated toilets and don't live in a fairy land where they can afford a personal chauffer.

Which makes sense now that you fixed your typo.

Or, perhaps you could do a little less lip flapping and find out that it is a movement with a somewhat large base of support including the Urban Institute.

Link? Because I'm looking for any Urban Institute comments on the subject and I can't find anything. There's certainly plenty of discussion of prison reform, the unfairness of mandatory minimum sentences, etc, but nothing about giving black people reduced sentences compared to white people because of shorter life expectancy.

file:///C:/Users/cuda1/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/IE/YBUYSA0L/412943-Has-Social-Security-Redistributed-to-Whites-from-People-of-Color-.pdf

I read a couple others a year or two back, I'll see if I can find them for you.

Then there was the episode of Bill Maher's show with an analyst from the Urban Institute that quite literally stated it. No clip from that, but it was talked about at the time.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Yeah, about that. when I was making $110,000 per year as an engineer I couldn't afford a personal driver, so try again.

110/yr isn't even close to the kind of wealth they're talking about.

They're talking about the kind of wealth where, during the time a cop takes to write you a $200 ticket, you've already made it back via one of your chains of businesses, franchise royalties, or old fashioned interest on accounts.

I think some fines do work this way. That said, to really cause the same pain to the wealthy as the poor it would have to disproportionately increase for the wealthy. Someone on minimum wage can’t affort to lose $100, in extreme cases that means they have to go without food sometime that month, or they can’t afford to pay to travel to work, which could cost them their job, or they couldn’t support their children. A wealthy person could never feel that sort of pain from a fine, you take $1000 off a high earner and they’ll be upset but they’ll just have to budget a slightly smaller holiday that year. And a very rich person you could stick a $10,000 bill on and they’d suffer no consequence beyond they indignity of it.

But generally, trying to base punishments on assessments of income/assets is likely to end up in all sorts of appeals and legal battles, especially the way the most wealthy go to lengths to hide their income, and who gave the most money to fight such things. Courts already struggle to get through their cases without every minor five turning into s protracted argument over the defendant’s genuine assets.

 cuda1179 wrote:
file:///C:/Users/cuda1/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/IE/YBUYSA0L/412943-Has-Social-Security-Redistributed-to-Whites-from-People-of-Color-.pdf

Uh, that's not how it works...

 Peregrine wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
file:///C:/Users/cuda1/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/IE/YBUYSA0L/412943-Has-Social-Security-Redistributed-to-Whites-from-People-of-Color-.pdf

Uh, that's not how it works...

Crap, hold on.

Here, try this link, which will give you a link to that file. https://www.sayanythingblog.com/entry/is-social-security-racist/

Ok, so linking a file from your hard drive doesn't work, but having the name of the file let me find it: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/24141/412943-has-social-security-redistributed-to-whites-from-people-of-color-.pdf

And it has nothing to do with your original claim. Not only does it say nothing about giving black people shorter prison sentences than white people for the same crime (or prisons at all), it explicitly rejects the idea of giving different social security benefits based on race.

Second, it is also easy to misinterpret these
results by race as asserting that race should be
a criterion by which benefits are allocated. We
agree that that, too, would be a mistake.

So, got any real evidence?

 cuda1179 wrote:
file:///C:/Users/cuda1/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/IE/YBUYSA0L/412943-Has-Social-Security-Redistributed-to-Whites-from-People-of-Color-.pdf

I read a couple others a year or two back, I'll see if I can find them for you.

Then there was the episode of Bill Maher's show with an analyst from the Urban Institute that quite literally stated it. No clip from that, but it was talked about at the time.

This had got nothing to do with proportional traffic fines.

Thread lock now.